Future female CEOs need more than coding camps and ‘enrichment’; here’s what works
The bosses of companies including Bed Bath & Beyond, Popsugar and Spanx learned that resilience and audacity are key to a girl’s success
When my daughter turned five, her top birthday gift ask was a giant whiteboard for keeping her extensive to-do lists. Along with keeping order, she likes giving orders. Her first victims were her dolls, and then a constant rotation of family members forced to play school where, of course, she played teacher. She seems destined to run a big company.
But lately, I have had to wonder: will she?
As a culture, we are still wrestling with who can be a CEO. When Mary Winston, CEO of US homeware company Bed Bath & Beyond, became the 33rd female CEO in the Fortune 500 last May, and an interim CEO at that, she made headlines. Fortune just asked “Wall Street Has Never Had a Woman CEO. Why Not?” The article flew through the Twittersphere, doubly so because it followed Forbes’s “America’s 100 Most Innovative Leaders” list containing 99 men and one woman. Recently, the pregnant CEO of US co-working space The Wing, Audrey Gelman, is staring out from the cover of Inc. magazine. Her pose is being hailed as groundbreaking.
Really?
Something is shifting in me as I observe all of this. I am not thinking about how we push progress for working women. I am focusing on how we raise our girls. I think it’s time to play the long game.
